Technology hurting braille literacy

Sunday

Jan 13, 2008 at 12:01 AMJan 13, 2008 at 1:05 PM

Lisa Ostrow's "pencil" is a bulky typewriter-like object, steel gray with a carry handle. She's lugged it around for 35 years, bumping shins in middle school hallways, creating a clatter in the dorms at Harvard.

By Jennifer Lord, Daily News staff

Lisa Ostrow's "pencil" is a bulky typewriter-like object, steel gray with a carry handle. She's lugged it around for 35 years, bumping shins in middle school hallways, creating a clatter in the dorms at Harvard.

Understanding the pattern the machine makes - raised dots in a cell of six - has allowed Ostrow, a Franklin resident, to live an active, intellectual life. She's fluent in Russian, plays classical music and, in her daughters' younger years, it was her voice that read them bedtime stories.

Ostrow has been blind all her life. But braille, the raised-dot touch alphabet invented over a century ago, has given her independence, the ability to navigate life in a fairly low-tech way. With braille, she can read magazines and best sellers, discern the buttons on her microwave and even discreetly check the time on her watch.

"It's so much quicker and you have such easier access if you put it in braille - it's literally at your fingertips," said Ostrow, who was born blind due to Leber's congenital amaurosis, an inherited retinal degenerative disease.

Braille was devised in 1821 by Louis Braille, a 15-year-old blind Frenchman. The tactile alphabet has been the major method that blind people have used to read and write.

Current statistics, however, show that braille literacy is waning. According to the Perkins School for the Blind in Newton, 15 to 20 percent of people who are blind or visually impaired now read braille, a dramatic drop-off from the 1950s and 1960s when at least half of all school age blind persons were braille literate.

A combination of factors are causing the decline. Voice recognition software, computer readers, books on tape and other technology has broadened access for the blind. By the same token, they have made the teaching of braille seem less important.

"Any teenager who is blind can surf the Internet, but without braille, he still can't read or write," said Steven Rothstein, Perkins president.

According to the American Foundation for the Blind, only 32 percent of Americans who are blind are employed. Several studies indicate that at least 90 percent of that population are braille readers, the foundation states.

"The teaching of braille seems to have gone down in school systems because there is so much technology available," said Aubrey Webson, a Bellingham resident and an international development consultant at Perkins. "But technology is not always as accessible as braille.

"If I'm sitting in a meeting or a classroom and I want to get some information, it's easy to check my notes if they are in braille," he said.

Both Webson and Ostrow learned braille at age 5, the same age that most sighted students learn to read. The intimacy of sitting down with books has allowed them to learn spelling, sentence structure, grammar and punctuation, all subtleties that disappear when words are merely spoken.

"It is all about literacy, quite frankly," Ostrow said. "Without braille, you cannot be literate. You cannot learn how to spell. You cannot have syntax. And these are things you need to know. If the rate of literacy was as low in the general population as it is in the blind population, there'd be a political uproar. You just can't have people who don't know how to read and write."

Giving a vocal example to her point, Ostrow's ringing phone announced the phone number of her caller. "It's one of those advances in technology that actually have precluded people from learning braille," she joked.

Ostrow has dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship and spent most of her childhood in Canada, with the exception of her early schooling years. Her father took a job in Colorado in part so she could receive her education at a school for the blind there.

It was then that they gave her the Perkins Brailler, the machine she uses to this day.

"When my mom and dad gave this to me, they said, 'This is your pencil. Treat it well,"' Ostrow recalled. "And I've had it for 35 years."

Braille played a key role in her life at Harvard University, from which she graduated in 1988 with a degree in Slavic languages and literature. She took notes in class using a special slate, a ruler-like object with which she could poke notes without the noise of the Brailler.

To study Russian, she needed to learn Russian braille. The problem was, this was in the declining years of the Soviet Union, and there were no Russian braille texts to be found in the United States.

Ostrow was able to obtain a primer in Russian braille, so with the assistance of an aide, she had her texts read to her as she transcribed everything into Russian braille.

"There is no way to truly become fluent in a language without reading it," she said. "You can speak it, but I found it was much easier to learn with the words under my fingertips."

Knowing braille also opens up a host of career opportunities to people who are blind - it is impossible to become a lawyer without the ability to read law texts, Webson noted.

"To produce braille is expensive, whether it's producing mass braille or for an individual," he said. "Our challenge with braille is also making it relevant for kids."

This, Webson added, is as much of a challenge for sighted children as it is for blind. The rise in technology has brought a decline in penmanship and the use of cell phone texting and instant messaging has impacted spelling and grammar among the young.

"Braille is as much of a challenge as pen and paper," he said. "They all use the computer, the text messaging."

Ostrow will admit to enjoying books on tape. But listening to them is a decidedly passive activity, one she can do while folding laundry.

"You're not as deeply involved with what is going on than when you have a book at your fingertips," Ostrow said. "And then, you're also dependent on the reader. There are books I have not read because I cannot abide the reader. I have to say, 'Can I put up with this voice for 18 hours?"'

Braille books do take up more space than regular books. The paper has to be thick and the text is always the same size. Books like Julia Child's "The Way to Cook" take up eight volumes in braille - and, Ostrow notes, she has to be extra careful to not spill on her cookbooks, since liquid makes the type lose its form.

Many magazines are also translated into braille, Ostrow said, bringing out a thick copy of National Geographic. Its white pages are a far cry from the colorful magazine known for its photography, but the articles are all intact - and she is even able to discern what is in the photographs she is missing.

"Even Playboy is in braille," she said. "I can actually say I've read Playboy for the articles."

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